Integral sustainability in the interventions of historical centers: utopia or reality?

Abstract

The social and urban transformations, the new functional and physical demands caused by population growth, the expansion of cities produced by the industrial revolution and the destruction of Europe during the First and Second World War, have built a series of interventions in Historical centers (here in after HC) of cities. These interventions have had a boom in the late XX century, in the 70´s and 80´s, and have spread (with different modalities of intervention) to the present, generating some changes that have deepened even more problematic exist in the cities, and other interventions that on the contrary, have looked for alternatives trying to contribute to the sustainable urban development of the HC.This article emerges as part of research in development focused on urban interventions aimed at the recovery of historical centers. It is based on the identification of proposals for intervention and management carried out in Latin America, Italy and Spain from the 1970s to the present, framed in Urban Plans. They have been systematized through the elaboration of Datasheets that have addressed a series of variables that have allowed us to determine the changes manifested in urban projects and their intervention and management strategies, as well as to recognize the possible existence of Utopian cases such as Bolonia, La Habana, and Vitoria Gasteiz, which propose an integral view of the CH, considering aspects related to physical-environmental, socio-cultural, economic and institutional (management) issues. Understanding as utopia (from Greek οὐ - "no" - and τόπος - "place" -) to the concept of "no place" coined by Thomas Moro in 1516 to describe an ideal society, and therefore non- existent, but at the same time better than the known wich leads to talk of eutopia (Εὖ - "good" or "good") and τόπος ("place"), as the "good place", that is to say, "a good ideal or non-existent place".